B and I went to Discovery Park a couple of weeks ago. I’ve got so many very delicious photos to share with you! It was brilliantly sunny just about everywhere except for Magnolia, which was fogged in. The entire park was shrouded in mist and mystery.

The boats on the Sound looked eerily awesome. Most of them I could figure out: there was the ferry, with the sunlight shining on it through the mist.

One of the ferries – probably the Bremerton Ferry – with sunlight glinting off its front windows.

Ferries are dead simple to identify. They’re Janus-faced, looking both forward and backward, because they don’t ever turn around.

There were a few barges hauling freight, and even some sailboats. It’s been a terrifying mild January so far. Even that day, with all the fog, was relatively warm, and the breezes just right.

Share the Verdad:

Welcome to The Old Earth Ministries Online Geology curriculum! I hope your attention spans are nice and short today, because this first chapter is only about 1,370 words long. And it’s meant to last all week. According to the instructions, we’re to read all the words today, do some research tomorrow, take quiz the day after, then review, then test on the final day. Easy-peasy as long as you’re a quick reader.

Take, for instance, the Left Behind series, which Fred Clark reads so we mercifully don’t have to. You may be tempted to dismiss them as nothing more than hack writing, lazy dime store thrillers that are nothing more than empty entertainment. But there are people who really truly believe the shit LaHaye and Jenkins are writing is prophesied to come true, and will happen any time now. Fred, being an evangelical Christian himself, is able to get deep into their worldview and show not just how fucked up it is, but how it informs their attitude towards things like taking care of the environment (why bother when you’re gonna be raptured?), world peace (anyone advocating for it is aiding and abetting the Antichrist), and war (bring on those end times!!!). These books both showcase and reinforce the fucked-up worldviews of people who believe they are living in the End Times, are Real True Christians who will be raptured, and love to smirk at those of us who will be left behind to suffer plagues, famine, war and death by their asshole of a god.

It’s been almost a decade since the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial put Intelligent Design on the witness stand and unmasked it as the religion-lite pseudoscience it is. The repercussions still resonate. It’s very difficult for this nonsense to get footing within schools when an actual Republican judge appointed by none other than George W Bush hisownself has declared it foolishness. You expect blatantly religious claptrap to get struck down by courts no matter the figleaf it wears. But to have a conservative Lutheran judge demolish it sans mercy, issuing an opinion that gave it an unrestrained verbal flailing worthy of the most godless heathen – that was divine.

White people like myself are the ones with the problem, and the ones with the vast majority of the power. You may not feel like it. You may want to believe you’re a minority, too, that you’ve experienced racism, that you’re not a racist and never do racist things, that everyone you know is double-plus good, and anyway, it’s hard and not your problem. I’ve heard you. I’ve lived with you, and gone to school with you, and slept with you, and worked with you, and I have been you. And I’m tired of the excuses. So don’t make them here. If you aren’t willing to be the solution, if all you want to do is say, “Well, yes, but…” and come up with excuses as to why the systemic racism in our society isn’t your fault, then you’re not going to be happy with what I’m telling you. I wasn’t happy when I realized it myself, honestly. But shut up and bear with me. Practice your listening. Don’t stop listening until you’ve reached the end of this post.

I haz a sad cuz my ‘puter died, and the temporary replacement would esplode if I asked it to do a Google Hangout, so no talk from me. But that’s okay, because there’s soooo much other awesome stuff going on! Pick a session or twelve or all of them and enjoy! Saturday and Sunday’s schedule after the jump.